


Affairs of the Heart

by faithinthepoor



Series: Once Upon a Time [30]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 00:55:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithinthepoor/pseuds/faithinthepoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during Welcome to Storybrooke</p>
            </blockquote>





	Affairs of the Heart

**Author's Note:**

> In my series this follows my [Fairytale Drabbles](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618763), [Mirror Mirror](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618771), [This Provincial Life](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618775), [Viviane or Nimue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618809), [Dreams and Wishes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618851), [All the Better To….](http://archiveofourown.org/works/619484), [Magic Keys](http://archiveofourown.org/works/619497), [Curiouser and Curiouser](http://archiveofourown.org/works/619514), [Snow Blind](http://archiveofourown.org/works/620280), [Spinning Straw](http://archiveofourown.org/works/620288), [Wooden Hearts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/621128), [Poisoned](http://archiveofourown.org/works/622526), [True Love and Other Curses](http://archiveofourown.org/works/625038), [Spellbound](http://archiveofourown.org/works/628806), [Over the Rainbow](http://archiveofourown.org/works/630076), [Facades](http://archiveofourown.org/works/632227), [Lost Girls](http://archiveofourown.org/works/636939), [Monstrosities](http://archiveofourown.org/works/640162), [Love and Lies](http://archiveofourown.org/works/652912), [Something Wicked this Way Comes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/665458), [Dreamscapes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/672345), [Homecomings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/676052), [Test Match](http://archiveofourown.org/works/682287), [Wishful Thinking](http://archiveofourown.org/works/697330), [Absent Friends](http://archiveofourown.org/works/771482), [Small Mercies](http://archiveofourown.org/works/773663), [State of Mind](http://archiveofourown.org/works/778498), [Good Intentions](http://archiveofourown.org/works/802589) and [The Sins of Mothers](http://archiveofourown.org/works/820893)

Time has lost all meaning but that is not something which concerns her. Time isn’t something she wants or needs. She has no interest in time and its twisted lies. Time is her enemy, it gave her an eternity of torture and then a brief second of happiness. Maybe she is meant to be grateful for that slither of joy but she is not. It has only made everything worse. She is done with time. She is done with everything.

She destroys everything she touches. It’s one thing to destroy the good things, that she accepts, that she understands, but she destroys the bad things too. She gave her mother back her heart and then suddenly everything fell into place, everything made sense. That sounds like something that she should rejoice but in reality it was the worst fate imaginable. To learn that she had everything wrong is the spoiled icing on top of a cake of cruelty. 

Nothing that happened to her was necessary. Her life is lie. Her life is nothing. She is nothing. 

She runs her gloved hands over the polished coffin and whispers, “I’m sorry Mother.” It’s not the first time she has said it. She has lost count of the amount of times she has said those words but she could say them forever and it still wouldn’t be enough.

There is no absolution for her. There never will be. She wonders if deep down she has known that all along. Why else would she work so hard to find her salvation only to destroy it?

The curse may have broken recently but the path to that destruction started long ago. She started tearing things down almost from the moment she arrived, long before she became frustrated by the tedious monotony of the prison she had placed them all in. She couldn’t just be content. She meddled and she needled. She might have believed that she took Snow to see the vegetative version of Charming out of spite but she can’t deny that what she did was wrong. Not because it hurt Snow, that is always a bonus, but because it set the ball rolling on the path that would bring about her demise.

She never envisioned things ending this way. It’s such a pitiful fate for someone who cast such a long shadow. ‘Like mother, like daughter,’ she thinks. Cora deserved a better death. Cora’s first death was better than this one but the end result is the same. Regina has assassinated her mother not once but twice. It doesn’t really help to know that only one of those deaths was planned and it certainly doesn’t help to know that neither of those deaths was deserved.

Cora should have stayed dead. It would have been better for all concerned. No good can come of Cora’s last moments. She knows that her mother seemed to find peace but Regina can’t. It was all too brief and it was all too public. Snow should not have been allowed to witness something so personal. Regina feels as though she has been violated.

She startles for a second, convinced that she has heard a sound, but there is nothing there. The tomb is desolate. She should expect nothing less. There is no one to mourn Cora. 

Regina is not even sure that she mourns Cora. At least she’s not sure what she is mourning. She has buried her mother before, she should be good at it by now but instead of easier it has gotten harder. That death was cleaner. That death was logical. This death is senseless.

Cora died only so that Rumplestiltskin could live. Cora may not have been good but she doesn’t begin to measure up against Rumplestiltskin on the scales of evil. Regina knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that he is the mastermind behind all of this. She may not know all of the details but she knows he changed her into the evil queen that she became. Daniel’s death may have been pivotal in her transformation but it alone was not enough. It left her broken but not shattered. She still needed a push from Rumple in order to fall over the edge.

That’s not the half of it though. He is clearly a much larger player than she ever understood. He knew Cora before she was a monster and Regina is certain that the trickster is the reason Cora kept her heart safe, the reason that Regina grew up without love, and the reason that Regina was vulnerable to his manipulations in the first place.

She is not an evil queen. She never was. She is a pawn. She is nothing but a naïve girl who unknowingly did Rumple’s bidding and she is certain that the same is true of her mother. Nobody seems to understand that - they can only see the puppets, not the man pulling the strings. Her mother died for his crimes and Regina knows she will share the same fate. She will burn for his sins and his evil will live on.

His evil won’t just live, it will be celebrated. Even Henry has happily embraced the lizard skinned monster as a welcome addition to his family. It should worry her that Henry seems to be willing to attach himself to random strangers and evil doers, well evil doers who are not her, but it doesn’t. It’s too late to save her son, too late to stop Rumplestiltskin and too late to make her life better. It’s too late for everything.

She runs her hand over the coffin again and knows that this is the very last time she will say, “I’m sorry Mother.” She closed her eyes and plunges her hand into her own chest, pulling out her sorry excuse for a heart.

The seeds of evil were far reaching and the heart is not in good shape, it is blackened and battered. It’s not a heart at all; it’s a mass of malevolence, a cancer. Regina looks at the organ with detachment. Now that it is removed she can’t even feel pain over the state of her heart. She can’t feel anything at all.

The lack of feeling makes things easier. It doesn’t take any effort to squeeze the heart until she feels like she can’t breathe. Her vision blackens as she continues to squeeze and her last thought is that she hopes that the next world is better than this one.

She doesn’t get to see the next world though. She hears a distant scream and then suddenly her fingers are burning. There is no acrid smell but her skin seems to be sizzling and she is unable to keep hold of the heart. She drops it to the floor as the fire travels down her arm straight to where her heart should be. She feels a burst of warmth in her chest and her eyes fly open as she gulps down air.

Emma fucking Swan is literally holding Regina’s heart in her hands and no matter how hard Regina tries to crush the pointless organ she can not force her fingers through the white flames coming out Emma’s hand.

“What the hell do you think you are doing?” she growls.

“Saving you,” Emma says simply.

“I don’t need saving. I don’t _want_ saving.”

Emma gives her a sad looks and tells her, “Maybe I’m not saving you then, maybe I’m saving myself because I don’t want to live without you.”

The cavity in Regina’s chests feels a burst of pain and fear. “This isn’t about you,” she states weakly.

“The hell it’s not.”

“Emma you are better off without me.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Just look at that thing,” Regina nods her head towards the blackened mess, “it has nothing to offer you.”

Emma tilts her head and scrutinises the object, carefully turning it in her hands. “I don’t think you look hard enough.”

“It’s a mess,” she insists, “I’m a mess. I have no heart to give you.”

“Yes you do. I’m holding it right now.”

“Then you know better than anyone that I can’t love you because I don’t have a real heart. I have a piece of pure evil where my heart should me. You need to find someone who can really love you.”

“You don’t believe you love me?” Emma asks.

She jabs a finger into the black lump, “How can I?”

Emma moves the heart out of Regina’s reach, as though she is frightened of what Regina might do to it. “I can see how this is an obstacle.”

“That’s putting it mildly, dear. So you see, I can’t possibly love you.”

“And yet you do,” Emma fires her a beaming smile.

“Emma, you know that’s impossible.”

“I can see that it’s not likely and I can see that it must take a lot of effort on your part. Good thing that I’m so amazing and easy to love.”

“This is no time for jokes.”

“I’m not joking, just teasing. I know you love me Regina and that you can do that with a heart so broken means you are stronger than you think. It makes me love you more.”

“How can you? You can see what am. That is the heart of a monster.”

“Regina, you are not the first person to have had your heart broken so badly that you thought you’d never love again.”

“This isn’t a metaphor, Emma, my heart is ruined.”

“You’re world does tend to take things a tad too literally. I guess that makes the fact that you got over your heartbreak even more impressive.”

“Clearly I didn’t,” Regina says with a shake of her head. “You know for a while there I really thought I had, which makes seeing that pathetic heart all the more depressing.”

“You’re wrong. You did push past it. I can feel it and I can see it.”

“Now you are being ridiculous.”

“You have no idea what I feel, what I….”

“Perhaps not,” Regina interrupts, “but we can both see my heart and we both know I’m incapable of love. Nothing good can come from that heart.”

“You don’t look properly,” Emma inches towards her, “you need to look closer.”

“There is nothing to see,” Regina says and she turns her head away. She doesn’t need to see her heart again, not unless she is crushing it between her fingers.

“Humour me,” Emma’s fingers land on Regina’s jaw and tilt Regina’s head.

She opens her eyes, determined to be done with this charade, and finds she is unable to comprehend what she is seeing. Her heart still looks like a lump of charcoal but everywhere that Emma’s fingers touch the tissue glows bright and red. “How can this be?” she marvels.

“Your heart likes me,” Emma says with a smirk. “You like me.”

“Of course I do,” she says absently, “but I don’t understand this.” She reaches towards the heart and Emma eyes her cautiously. Regina places her fingers over Emma’s and the heart glows even brighter, the redness spreads further.

“Why is it so easy for you to believe that you are beyond redemption?”

“Because I am. I tried for years and I didn’t change, I couldn’t.”

“Well you are changing now,” Emma places a second hand on top of their joined ones and Regina can feel her heart pulsing in approval, “this proves it.”

“No it doesn’t. It’s not enough and it’s too late. Your mother came to see me today. She asked me to kill her.”

Emma blanches and seems to be holding her breath. “What did you do?”

“Don’t worry. She is still alive.”

Emma gently squeezes Regina’s fingers. “You know I wouldn’t blame you,” Emma’s eyes flick towards the coffin, “you would be well within your rights but I’m glad you didn’t do it.”

“I told you I wouldn’t take your mother from you and I meant it but Emma it was so hard. I’ve wanted her dead for so long. I only let her live because I thought she would suffer more that way. I’m not a good person.”

“You are so much better than you think you are.”

“I’m really not. Today proved that.”

“And what? You die for that?”

“I should have died long ago, Emma. I’ve always known that but I kept thinking things could change. I was wrong. They can’t. It’s too late. I’m bad for you and I’m bad for Henry.”

“That’s for Henry and me to decide.”

“Henry’s already made his decision,” Regina reminds Emma.

“Henry is a child. He equates me not telling him about Neal right up there with you being the Evil Queen. He doesn’t know what he is talking about.”

“His rating system might need some work but it doesn’t mean that he is wrong about me.”

“And what about me? Do you think I don’t know what I’m doing? Do you not care about how I feel?”

“Of course I do,” her words sound unconvincing, even to her own ears.

“Wait,” Emma says, “can you feel anything at all at the moment?”

“I don’t know?”

“Okaaay,” Emma says slowly. She closes her eyes and with their hands still joined she pushes the heart back into Regina’s chest. 

Regina’s body floods with warmth and light; it’s as though a sun has risen inside of her. Her emotions are overwhelming and tears fall from her eyes unbidden. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Emma gathers Regina in her arms and plants a kiss on her forehead. “Don’t you ever do that to me again.”

“I love you so much,” she tells Emma.

“Then why would you do this?”

“Because I love you. Because I want to do right by you.”

“Oh my stupid, stupid idiot,” Emma kisses Regina’s forehead again and holds the kiss longer this time. “I thought this would go without saying but your death is not the right thing for me.”

“It really did seem like the right thing. I could barely keep my promise not to kill your mother. I thought you would be better off without me and I knew I wouldn’t be able to give you up if I were alive.”

“Well then, clearly killing yourself was the only logical option.”

“Are you mocking me?” she asks with the raise of an eyebrow.

“If I didn’t do that, I’d be falling apart.” 

Regina feels a wave of crushing guilt break over her at the thought of the pain she has caused Emma. “I promise to do better.”

“Regina I don’t need you to promise me that. I don’t need you to promise me that you won’t kill Mary Margaret. I do need you to promise me that you will never, ever do anything as stupid as this again.”

“I really am trying hard to be better but I keep stumbling at every turn.”

“You’re doing fine,” Emma grabs Regina and pulls her to the ground. Emma sit with her back to the coffin and positions Regina between her legs before wrapping her arms around Regina and kissing her hair.

“I doubt most people would agree with you.” 

“Yeah well most of them would go back to that hell hole you guys called a world so I wouldn’t be concerned with their judgement.”

She leans back into Emma’s embrace, “Sometimes I fear that no matter how good I am it won’t matter, I could be perfect and it wouldn’t be enough. I wouldn’t be forgiven.”

“Do you only do it for forgiveness? Why do you even care what they think?”

“You’re right, they are all beneath me,” she says with a smile, “but it would be nice not to fear assassins around every corner.”

“That does take some steam out of my argument that you shouldn’t care what they think.”

“I don’t care what they think. I do care if they form a lynch mob and want to come and burn the witch.”

“You’re not a witch.”

“There are several indicators that might suggest that I am, dear.”

“But you are not the evil kind of witch.”

“Again, there are indicators that suggest otherwise.”

“Regina,” Emma moves to rest her chin on Regina’s shoulder, “I know you better than that. I see you. I know what’s inside you. I did just hold your heart in my hand.”

“Yes you did,” she says with a sigh.

“You seem unhappy about that.”

“I thought my heart was beyond help. That the blackness that took hold there couldn’t be stopped. What I saw today makes me think that things could really change. That I really could be pure again. It seems cruel because even if I did achieve it, no one would ever believe it.”

“I’d believe it,” Emma says with sincerity.

“You don’t count. You’d believe anyway,” Regina says dismissively.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m in love and therefore I’m blind. Love is a weakness and all that.”

“Well it’s certainly a fucking inconvenience.”

“That’s my girl,” Emma says placing a kiss on Regina’s neck.

It frightens Regina just how true that is. She really is Emma’s and that should make her feel good but all it does is make her fearful that Emma will be taken from her at any moment. That at some point she will make the wrong decision and it will all go away. “You know you ruined everything, right?”

“What have I done now?” Emma doesn’t sound worried. Her voice is light-hearted and indulgent.

“I was going to tell you that I was too damaged to ever really love you and that you should set yourself free because I’m nothing more than an albatross around your neck but what you did with my heart suggests that’s not true. I really am capable of love,” she says the last bit with wonder.

“Of course you are. I didn’t need to see that heart to know that.”

“How can that be?”

“Because I know you love me.”

“Pretty sure of yourself there, aren’t you Miss Swan?” her tone is cold and she wishes she didn’t respond like that. She wishes this didn’t terrify her.

Emma doesn’t respond immediately, instead she nuzzles at Regina’s neck and strokes her hair. “I knew it could have just been in my head but in a way it didn’t matter. Whether you love me or not you make me feel loved and I guess that’s the bit that counts because that’s a big deal. I’ve got one or two trust issues. I don’t easily think that I’m loveable, let alone loved.”

“We are both so broken. We are such a bad idea.”

“I happen to think that we are a very good idea,” Emma runs her hands down Regina’s arms and links their fingers together. “I know you make me feel less broken.”

“Emma, you are ruining everything today. I’ve been worried for a while that things changed once we got you back. Before you went through that portal we didn’t work that well. We fought a lot. We said some truly horrible things to one another. Things are different now. I understand the sex bit, I missed that a lot and I’m all for more of that, but we are nicer to one another and we talk about love a lot more. I keep telling myself that we just chose to forget all the bad things and that sooner or later it will all fall apart again but the things you’ve done and said today make me think it’s possible that this could really work. That we could really be in love.”

“Of course we are, stupid,” Emma says with affection. She turns Regina’s head to the side so she can capture her lips.

“I don’t like these aspersions you keep casting on my intelligence.”

“Well then you had better stop doing and saying stupid things.”

“You’re impossible.”

“But you love me anyway.”

“So it would seem.”

“So are there other things that you kept bottled up inside? I mean we’ve never had a conversation about our intentions nor our sexuality for that matter.”

“I didn’t think we needed to, I thought that was obvious.”

“Just because a girl’s been in prison doesn’t mean that you should make assumptions.”

“What are you talking about?” Emma has taken the conversation in a direction that Regina can not understand.

“Oh. I just thought that you’d decided that because I’d been in prison I might have had certain experiences with women.”

“Is that a thing?”

“Well, yeah.”

“I didn’t know. Dungeons didn’t really work like that, at least not in my experience, and we only have the one cell here in Storybrooke, which before you came along was pretty much exclusively reserved for a drunk Leroy.”

“Then why did you think it was a discussion we didn’t need to have?”

“You hadn’t been here very long before we were tearing one another’s clothes off. Attraction wasn’t an issue, neither was performance, so I thought it was reasonable to presume that I was not the first woman that you had been with and for you to do the same.”

“But I happen to know for a fact that I’m not the first woman you’ve been with,” Emma says bitterly.

“Don’t be like that, dear. What you and I have is completely different.”

“I do know that but it doesn’t mean that the thought of other people having touched you makes me happy.”

“It should. If I’ve not had past experience I wouldn’t be so good at fucking.”

“Well aren’t we full or confidence?” Regina can’t see Emma’s face but she’s sure she is smiling.

“It’s hardly misplaced. There have been times when you have suggested that we should high five after having sex.”

“Don’t make that sound distasteful.”

“It’s hardly appropriate.

“It would only be inappropriate if the sex wasn’t high five worthy.”

She laughs in spite of herself. “You really shouldn’t be jealous of Ruby you know.”

“Ok,” Emma says warily.

Regina feels strangely nervous at revealing this, “Before you sex was just a tool I used.”

“You didn’t enjoy it?”

“I enjoyed power. I enjoyed dominating and controlling people.”

“And you think you don’t do that with me?” Emma’s voice is full of mirth.

“What we have is different. We have intimacy,” she says. Her voice barely a whisper.

“Of course we do. It’s why I’m willing to hang out in a crypt with you.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s ok. You do take me to the nicest places.”

“Stick with me, dearest. You haven’t seen anything yet.”

“I look to forward to it. Oh and Regina?”

“Yes?” she asks almost as hesitantly as Emma.

“You are stuck with me.”

She finds that fact both comforting and terrifying but she knows that she is not going to run away from it. Regina will always wonder whether she really had it in her to choose between her mother and Emma but she is glad that she doesn’t have to. Emma makes things better. Emma makes her better and, thanks to Emma, for the first time in her life she thinks she actually deserves something good. Now all she is has to do is learn to hold on to that feeling.


End file.
